


Draining darkness

by lheadley



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst to a quite unnecessary extent, Bromance, M/M, Suggestions of Evil Stiles, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 13:12:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1173470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lheadley/pseuds/lheadley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles fled to the place he felt safest, the place he had hidden as a child. But while hiding there he overheard what he was doing to two of the people he loved most in the world. Was there no one who could take the darkness from his heart?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draining darkness

Stiles woke, seemingly only minutes after he had dozed off: face mushed into the pillow of his bed with his limbs spread out starfish like, as if he were staking a claim to his mattress and trying to prevent anyone else from moving in on his territory. Which was absurd, as no one had ever shown any inclination to stake a claim or in any way move in on any part of his bed. Apart from Scott on sleepovers which didn’t count. And Derek on a couple of occasions. But he hadn’t seen Derek since the alpha pack episode. Outside the window the world was dark, which meant he had to have been asleep for a couple of hours at least. With a bleary focus he glanced at his Samsung – just past nine at night.

Stiles stood irresolutely, unsure what he wanted to do. His focus shifted, and he looked down at the trail of shoes, socks and T-shirt scattered in a long line across his bedroom floor from doorway to bed. He could not remember stripping down to his jeans, and he never treated his T-shirts in so disrespectful a manner. Although, was that _his_ T shirt? He could not remember owning a white T shirt with a blue collar like that – it was far too plain, and far too lacking in witty slogans. If he could not remember as simple a thing as the nature of his admittedly extensive T-shirt collection, what else had he forgotten? Had he neglected to remember leaving the house and ordering someone else to be killed? Perhaps his mind had overlooked the fact that he had casually murdered one of his friends, or Isaac? Siles couldn’t cope with the idea he had hurt one of his friends. And it might be a bit awkward if he‘d killed Isaac. Stiles could feel the bile of panic burning its way up his throat, and tried to get his breathing under control, to stabilise himself. It didn’t seem to be working. He could have done anything, he could be anything, he could…

While he still was in at least partial control of his faculties, Stiles made a bolt for the door, bouncing off the frame before he managed to regain coordination and move quickly down the stairs – bare feet making little sound against the wood. There was one place that he could go to, where he had gone in the past when panic attacks had hit him. Somewhere he felt safe.

Stiles thought he heard noises as his dad stirred in the family room as he passed –a rustling of paper as he reviewed another case. Stiles raised himself slightly so as to walk on tiptoe as he moved swiftly into the kitchen, and on into the walk-in cupboard at the side of the room. He pulled the door to behind him and curled on the floor in the semi-darkness; a sliver of light from the kitchen coming under the base of the door, bathing the tips of his toes in a soft yellow glow as he hugged his knees to his bare chest. He was suddenly aware of how clammy his skin was. Stiles pushed his face down, pressing so he could feel the bone of his eye sockets against his kneecaps, the pressure causing sparks to shatter against the black mist behind his eyelids.

This was where he had come when things got bad after his mother had died. Then he had been able to hide even more, actually crawling underneath the shelf that was now digging uncomfortably into his back as he crouched in place. The confined space, the kitchen smells had given both security and the reassurance of the comforts of childhood. Curled into a semi-foetal position Stiles felt a faint pull back to the past.

How long he stayed like that, Stiles had no idea. He had left his Samsung upstairs on his bed, and time no longer had much meaning when such huge parts of his day seemed to disappear from his consciousness. But when he was next aware of his surroundings, Stiles could hear voices on the other side of the door; the voices of two of the people he loved most in world.

“…is he?”. Scott was speaking in a brittle tone of false calm that was trying to contain an obvious sense of fear. Stiles had a nostalgic recollection of nights past – long past – covertly watching Buffy on DVD in Scott’s room with an oblivious babysitter downstairs, and pretending not to be scared by the vampires or – oh the irony – the werewolves.

“He’s upstairs. I checked half an hour ago. Dead to the world.” His dad was also trying for calm reassurance, while simultaneously suppressing an inner panic. Stiles had first heard that tone of voice from his dad nine years before, when both his parents had told him that there was nothing to worry about. It never boded well.

There was the scrape of chairs being pulled back across the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor, and the sound of two bodies – one slightly heavier – slumping onto the seats.

“And…” Scott’s voice sounded apprehensive, asking a question he did not want to know the answer to. “… and… and… how is he doing? Is he…” Scott tailed off.

“He’s about the same. Good episodes. Bad episodes. It comes and goes.”

There was a pause on the other side of the door. Stiles lifted his head a fraction, to lessen the pressure on his eyes and to enable him to hear the conversation a little better. After a moment of silence from the kitchen, a sudden sound echoed that caused Stiles to tense. It was a cross between a howl and a dry, wracking sob of pain. There was another brief moment of silence that tormented Stiles. Had he done something unknowingly? Had ‘evil Stiles’ emerged somehow? Subconsciously he leaned towards the cupboard door to hear more.

Faintly at first, and then with increased volume, the initial solitary howl of pain was repeated, to merge into an endless thread of sobs that were punctuated by incoherent attempts to talk. Something inside Stiles seemed to fracture. That was Scott, crying. Crying in a way that Stiles had not heard for years, not since Scott’s father had forcibly taken him away from what had then been Scott’s grandmother’s house, the summer of his parent’s divorce. Crying in a way that Stiles was absolutely certain Scott had never done in front of anyone other than him, ever.

Stiles heard a murmuring sound in the deeper, bass tones of his father’s voice. There was a scrape of a chair on the floor – Stiles could imagine his dad moving his seat to be closer to Scott. As the seconds passed, the words became more coherent.

“Scott, don’t worry. He’ll be fine. We can work through this. We… I mean all three of us… have worked through… I mean when Claudia…  You’re his best friend, he can lean on you, I know he can. After his mom died, the ADHD, everything. I’m glad he has you as his partner in crime, werewolf or no. You’re the one that keeps him on the straight and narrow. Well, near the straight and narrow. At least within sight of the straight and narrow. Since that first day at kindergarten when the two of you were making castles in the sandbox, I’ve been so glad Stiles knew you. From that very first day, you brought him out of himself, made him happy…”

A particularly anguished cry broke out at that point.

“I’m why he is caught up in this. He’d be better if he’d never met me. He’d be safe without me in his life, he’d be…” the rest of the sentence was overwhelmed by a wailing, choking noise that seemed to shake the very wood of the intervening door.

Stiles rocked back and forth a couple of times before curling in on himself as much as he could, and sinking to his side on the floor. He knew, deep inside himself, that he was doing nothing but bringing pain to the two people who loved him most in the world. He was hurting two of the three people _he_ loved most in the world. Stiles stuffed a clenched fist into his open mouth as he sucked in a breath - mingling a silent shriek of agony and despair with the gasping need for oxygen that was the hallmark of a panic attack.

It took Stiles a while to rein in the panic. Scott seemed to have calmed somewhat too, the sobs being replaced by an occasional hiccup and a deep drawing in of breath. His dad was murmuring something, no doubt trying to reassure.

Finally Scott began talking again, his voice sounding rougher.

“Did he tell you what he did, at the motel, earlier this year?”

His dad must have shaken his head. Stiles had never said anything. It was before his dad had known, and once he did know the topic was somehow too intimate, too personal to Scott to explain. He heard Scott draw in a breath. Stiles quickly jammed his hands over his ears so as to drown out the story. He didn’t want to relive that moment, to remember the overwhelming cold terror that he might lose Scott. The muffled rumble of Scott’s voice dulled to background noise, and Stiles focused instead on the erratic thumping of his own heartbeat pulsing through his head.

When he judged it safe, he lifted his hands a little, but Scott hadn’t finished.

“..only have been him. Anyone else, and I’d have dropped the flare. But the moment he stepped towards me I knew I couldn’t do it. He was able to break through my darkness, he was the only one who could break… but I… I can’t break through his.”

“Scott” The Sheriff was speaking thickly, struggling to find words to say. Stiles’s last tattered fragments of self-restraint gave way under the force of the pain he was causing someone he had always felt was his brother, and his dad. In a detached way Stiles registered that he was screaming, hitting the back of the head against the wall behind him, heard the sound of a chair falling over and another breaking – perhaps even hitting a wall? Then a blinding light as the cupboard door was flung open. Stiles pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes, rocked back and forwards and kept screaming, feeling two pairs of hands reaching to restrain him.

 

 

It had gone black again. Time had passed, no doubt, but Stiles could not tell how much time had gone. He was still in the cupboard, but he wasn’t alone. He could was leaning back against someone, someone who had their arms around him. He could feel warmth; body warmth, and the warmth of regular breathing gently blowing against his hair. Stiles looked down. He saw blackness surging along the veins in the arms that encircled him.

“I was outside, protecting Scott. And I heard what happened.”

Stiles was silent for a long time, staring at the slow, hypnotic pulse of black that waxed and waned along the forearm.

“You… you’re draining… the darkness, it’s draining out of me when you hold me.”

Stiles could feel the scrape of stubble against his bare shoulder, smell the scent of leather-spice-woods cologne.

“Then I’d better make sure I don’t ever let you go”, whispered Derek.

 

 

 


End file.
